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Particularly with my electric, the chinrest clamp always seems to manage to find a way to be digging into my collarbone when I play. My first solution to that looked like this:
It worked ok. But rubber bands break, and the little foam pad I was using would fall off sometimes, or shift a bit when I was playing. So I decided I needed to come up with something simpler and more stable.
I took a small piece of soft leather and trimmed it down to size so it is just a little bigger than it needs to be to cover the metal part of the clamp, and punched a couple holes in it and attached it rough side out like so:
Simple, nothing to fall off or break, it doesn't shift around when playing..
So far I like it and it seems to be working well.
I know a lot of players use a bit of cloth like a small towel or whatever, but I didn't care for that. I like to be able to just pick up the instrument and play, and this seems to do the job so far.
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
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I see a mass produced product carried by ALL the better violin suppliers out there including Fiddlershop.com LOL
Coming to you along with the slipper-rest... this little jewel is priced at $9.95 including shipping and is available in dark mahogony or deer skin tan. Take the "bite" out of that chin rest. Order yours TODAY!
"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein
My fix for my daughter (she has the same problem that the clamp digs into her collar bone) is I crochet a chinrest cover for her. But Daniel's is a lot simpler and much less time consuming to make one!
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It has ended up working out well for my electric, so I made one for my acoustic as well.
This time I tried it with the smoother side of the leather out, and the sort of sueded side against the instrument. I had worried that might have more tendency to slip, but I tried it anyway, and it works fine.
I find it very comfortable, and it isn't going to damp vibration much, if at all. No fuss, no rubber bands. Rubber bands are fine, if you use them, but I just don't care for the look aesthetically speaking.
I'm not crazy about the colour on this particular bit of leather, but it was about the softest and cushiest I had around. I am thinking of maybe dying the leather a dark oxblood so it would look a bit better with the violin. And yeah, any leather people out there can rest easy that I am also figuring on skivving the edges, now that I know this actually works well for me.
The chinrest clamp on the acoustic wasn't as much of a problem as on the electric anyway, since the acoustic weighs only maybe half as much as the electric. I don't really want height from this so much as just something to keep the bare metal of the clamp covered with something soft for comfort's sake, and I think I can be pleased with the look of a bit of leather on my violin.
I did try playing the Hoffman without a chinrest while I had it off. I still like playing without a chinrest better, but I am trying to see if I can get used to it, since there are some advantages to using the chinrest. This chinrest is very comfortable, but it still feels like something alien between me and the instrument and it looks just wrong to me to have a chinrest on an acoustic. LOL
Playing it with the chinrest reminds me a bit of a couple times I played an acoustic guitar that was clamped into a stand. I had a friend who used to use that sort of setup so he could switch between electric and acoustic onstage without taking off the electric. It works, but it just wasn't to my liking. Maybe I'm just weird that way, but I like being more physically in touch with the instrument. It makes it easier to forget that the instrument is a separate object when playing and to just think of it as an extension of the body.
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
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